While the Xbox tax is real—gamers tend to criticize Xbox more harshly for making mistakes while Sony often gets a free pass—Microsoft isn’t doing itself any favors. The company could’ve at least made an effort even if it said that it had already ducked out of the console wars. Instead, we’re seeing few exclusives releasing on Xbox, resulting in Sony dominating the Game of the Year conversation.
The absolute worst part about this is that the best games for Xbox in 2024 aren’t even exclusive to the platform—they’re all multiplatform games like Tekken 8, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and Metaphor: ReFantazio, among others.
The only noteworthy newly released Xbox exclusives that came out this year are Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and Palworld and the former is already available to play on PlayStation.
Starfield: Shattered Space could’ve been good. Unfortunately, it was far from it. In fact, it’s one of the worst games this year, regardless of platform. Its awful critical performance puts Starfield and Bethesda Game Studios in a precarious spot as gamers now have lost hope about any potential reversal of Starfield’s fate, akin to Cyberpunk 2077, after it showed signs of finally living up to its potential ahead of the expansion’s release.
Avowed could be good, and so could Fable, but the former is already drawing flack for locking its FPS at launch while the latter could still be years away, and at which point, it would have to be good enough to convince people to buy an Xbox when the next generation of consoles is just right around the corner—a tough ask considering PlayStation’s treasure trove of exclusives grow by the day.
If it’s any consolation, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is finally coming out in December and it should be pretty good. But again, it isn’t going to be exclusive for long. In fact, don’t expect it to sell well on Xbox as the best platform to enjoy MachineGames’ upcoming title is the PlayStation 5 Pro.
The only selling point of the Xbox these days is as an alternative to PlayStation when it gets too expensive or when it’s out of stock. It’s good for the occassional surge in sales (just like what happened in Japan) but it’s far from sustainable nor reliable. Not to mention, what manufacturer would settle for their product to be the alternative, cheaper product?
With Halo now hinting at going multiplatform after confirming its move to Unreal Engine 5, the rest of Xbox’s first-party franchises could follow suit in the next few years. This would eventually leave the console market with only two major players: PlayStation and Nintendo.
Considering Nintendo is perfectly content doing its own thing, PlayStation, with its pseudo monopoly and Xbox’s subtle pivot towards third-party publishing, is a recipe for disaster for us consumers. We can only hope that Sony won’t abuse this by relying too much on unwanted remakes and remasters.
In other news, Square Enix’s multiplatform strategy isn’t off to a good start. Final Fantasy 16, one of the best selling games on PlayStation 5 last year, failed to make an impression in its PC debut.
